2006-02-11

The stuff about some US politico's editing their wiki bio's was on the news recently. Wiki's view of that is here; and amusingly, people have filed an RFC against them. Really, who could possibly so tasteless as to edit their own wikipedia entry ;-)?

9 Comments:

I realise that editing one's bio is somewhat frowned upon, but what is one supposed to do if the article contains errors? (Not that this relates to the case in point, and it's entirely hypothetical at the moment.)

If I had a Wiki entry about me, it would be complete nonsense. So I'm glad it doesn't, if I can't introduce facts. The whole thing seems designed to be wrong. Like a large school of lemmings, Wiki is dominated by mainstream group-think.

You admitted listening to Lubos Motl for edits to the gravity article. ST claims to predict gravity but in fact just predicts UNOBSERVED gravitons. So it is just dishonest of people like Motl to dictate or lead a consensus.

They won't listen to the established facts of spacetime, recession in the big bang, and the laws of motion.

Hubble wasn't a theorist. He screwed up by forgetting spacetime and assuming the best way to represent recession was as speeds varying with distance.

In spacetime reality, distance = c.time, c = speed of light. So the distances are meaningless, they will increase while the light is coming to us.

The correct recession in spacetime is velocity increasing with the travel time of the light, which is acceleration. From F=ma you then get outward force of big bang. From Newton's 3rd empirical law of motion, you get equal inward force, which QFT tells you is vector boson (force carrying) radiation. Geometry then gives you a good prediction of gravity strength, 10 m/s2 compared to a measured 9.8 m/s2 on Earth's surface, as well as a physical basis for the contraction term in general relativity, which compresses earth's radius by (1/3)MG/c2 = 1.5 mm.

Wikipedia is not interested in facts, but merely in facts which are already widely known. So it is useless for breaking through suppression caused by mainstream error and arrogant censorship.

In fact, you could say Wikipedia is controlled by its own form of bureaucracy.

Take the spacetime concept, F=ma, or any other component above. All are well established fact, but taken together the implication that they predict gravity is dismissed as a point of view or speculation. They won't listen, they just delete facts.

You can't win against group-think, which has the attitude towards innovation described here:

‘… the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them. Thus it happens that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they do it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly…’ - http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince06.htm

‘(1). The idea is nonsense. (2). Somebody thought of it before you did. (3). We believed it all the time.’ - Professor R.A. Lyttleton's summary of inexcusable censorship (quoted by Sir Fred Hoyle in ‘Home is Where the Wind Blows’ Oxford University Press, 1997, p154).

1. Feynman diagrams, the physics behind the maths of quantum field theory, show that forces arise from the exchange of gauge bosons (coming from distances at light speed, hence coming from times in the past).2. The big bang mass has an increasing speed, in our observable spacetime, from 0 toward speed of light c with times past of 0 toward 15 billion years (or distances of 0 to 15 billion light-years), giving outward force by Newton’s 2nd empirically based law: F = ma = m.dv/dt = m(c - 0) / (age of universe) = mcH, where H is Hubble’s constant (based on v = HR, where R is distance).3. Newton’s 3rd empirically based law suggests equal inward implosion force, carried by gauge bosons, which shielded by mass, proves gravity and electromagnetism to within 1.65% (proof below). This mechanism also predicts particle masses and other observables, and eliminates most of the unobserved ‘dark matter’ speculation and the need for a cosmological constant / dark energy (the latest data suggest that the ‘cosmological constant’ and dark energy epicycle would need to vary with time!

Hi James. I don't know if youn thought that dig was aimed at you, but it wasn't. It was a self-reference :-)

Nigel: without a surname, you wouldn't be accepted in wiki anyway. As for the gravity article, it was the GR bit not the string theory. "Wikipedia is not interested in facts, but merely in facts which are already widely known. So it is useless for breaking through suppression caused by mainstream error and arrogant censorship." - exactly true. Glad you spotted that...

Nigel - insults to the Stingy folk; and extensive discussions of the theory; don't belong here.

You say: "Usually Wikipedia is promoted as being something anyone can contribute to. However, the very people who have the best knowledge will be excluded purely because (1) they are the subject (2) the knowledge is not widely known."

Indeed: wiki *is* something anyone can contribute to. Its just that they can't contribute just-anything, there are rules. Autobiography is discouraged, but not forbidden (James is free to edit his own, esp to correct errors). Novel theories are not welcome, unless backed up by peer-reviewed pubs. For example, [[self creation cosmology]].